By Rhetta Akamatsu, BLOGCRITICS.ORG

Published 10:00 pm, Friday, July 5, 2013

Reaper's Legacy is the second book in the Toxic City trilogy that began with London Eye. In that book, Tim Lebbon introduced us to Jack and his friends Sparky, Jenna and Lucy-Anne, and his sister Emily, survivors of a devastating terrorist attack that wiped out most of the inhabitants of London and left the rest of them changed forever. Some are mad and some are sick, but all have new powers that make them either less or more than human. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is unaware that anyone still lives in the city, which has been declared toxic and off-limits for 1,000 years.

In London Eye, Jack and his sister and friends discovered that their mother, a Healer was alive and that their father, now known as Reaper, was the brutal leader of a group known as The Superiors who, along with another monstrous group known as Choppers, use London and its new beings as their own personal playthings.

In Reaper's Legacy, the action veers between Jack, who has developed a host of new powers he desperately hopes to use for good, and Lucy-Anne, who has broken from Jack's group and teamed up with a boy named Rook who controls the birds of the same name. Jack is seeking to rescue his mother and sister, who have been captured by the Choppers, while Lucy-Anne seeks her brother in the wildest part of this new, devastated London. In the bigger picture, the fate of London and all its inhabitants hangs in the hands of Jack, Lucy-Anne, Rook, Sparky and Jenna.

This book is just as thrilling, well-written, and engrossing as the first, and advances the story in surprising ways no reader could predict. The ruined city of London is as much a character as any of the humans and creatures in it, and Lebbon has done a masterful job of making the environment completely believable.

This is dark, dystopian fantasy at its best. While technically a Young Adult novel, teenagers and adults who can handle some very graphic violence for the sake of a good story will love this series and will wait breathlessly for the next one. Just be aware that it is not a stand-alone book; if you have not read London Eye much of this will be confusing, so get that one first.